Tommy Tiernan

The absent father

We are never still. On a blue ball spinning, we are. The world moves 1,000 miles an hour on its axis and 67,000 miles an hour through space. And coupled with that, last week, I had to drive to Roscommon. And after that Navan, Monaghan and Donegal. I’m off some place every week. I call it the Sweetcorn Tour ’cause I’m only passing through.

I leave the house excited and sad. Sad at being an absent dad for half the week. I was reared with an ever-present father and have never really gotten used to being an on-the-road one.

Excited at the prospect of adventure. Not wild adventure, ordinary adventure. Tea and tarmac and people adventure.

Anyways last week I was off to Rossies. I’d have blood in the county and so feel a tenuous connection to the place. The county town itself is a conundrum. The outskirts are prospering — a fine mart, a huge garage with a takeaway too, a posh hotel, but inside in the centre a lot of boarded-up shops. I headed to the church for a wee and a prayer but the goddamned thing was locked. Shouldn’t be allowed. Reminded me of a church I passed one time in Los Angeles that had a sign saying, ‘Private Property. Trespassers will be prosecuted.’ Fear of the stranger in a house that was built to welcome them.

Got talking to a Liverpool fan at the venue. Saying goodbye to me later that evening he shook me by the hand and said softly and sincerely to me: “You’ll never walk alone.” He meant it, and I felt it. ’Twas bigger than football. It was as good as a hug from a lover.

I had a long drive to Dublin straight after in order to appear bright-eyed and hilarious on some radio shows early the next morning.

I stayed in a hotel opposite a few nightclubs. It was the night of the Junior Cert results. Hammered young ones, hammered gossuns. My curiosity at staring at the human circus of their stumblings was tempered by concern: I hope they get home OK. You’d think of your own kids back home and wish them good luck on the adventure of their adolescence.

I felt bad after one of the interviews the following day, feeling as if I’d overstepped the mark in my giddiness. It was good natured, I know, but these are the days of vitriol and fear. We are not ready yet to celebrate all diversity. I strolled down Grafton St hounding meself for being so careless, but a phone call with my wife reassured me that it was fine. The compass of your own head is not always trustworthy, but what else do you have to go on? Thank God for others.

Into the car so and off to Navan. The town has a vibration for me. The past and the present are in such harmony and collision. How can both be alive? It’s like meeting a man and his ghost at the same time. I met an old school pal of mine in the foyer after me blatherings. It felt so good to see him, I have such affection for him. For all my old school pals. When you know someone as a child you believe in them for the rest of their lives, you know them in their innocence and goodness.

I felt sad afterwards alone in the hotel room. Sad because I’m not from that town any more. Sad because I’m a traveller. Sad because the group that I once belonged to doesn’t exist anymore. Sleep came slow. By the morning I was fine again and met another friend for tea. Told me that he runs now, all the time and no short distances either. Thirty-five miles maybe, out the door in the morning, not back til six in the evening. Forty, 50 miles no problem. I determined to take it up when I got home. “Go slow,” he said, “and bring a few quid for coffee.”

Up the road then to Monaghan. Glad of the drive of it. I’d done a show in the town the Thursday before the All-Ireland Semi-Final against Tyrone. Sometime in August it was. I got talking to a man who said that there was fellas coming back from San Diego and Chicago for it, “and they don’t even have tickets, Tom.” Said if they if got through to the final, “there’d be phuckers getting up from the dead to watch it.”

This time round I was in the Iontas centre in ’Blayney. I got talking to a writer in the dressing room afterwards. He’s the type of man I’d like to be. Kind, country and wise. He’s Monaghan to the bone. Accent as thick as Guinness and a manner gentle as grass. Said he’d just finished a novel about sex and God. “The ritual is good but the riding might be better” as a pathway to the divine. He’s 79 and still has the spark in the eye and the wife is lively too.

Off the following morning to Tir Chonaill. And I thought about being born there (Letterkenny, 1969) but not being from there. We left when I was three. Sometimes I wonder am I from anywhere. After Carndonagh, which is right up there near Malin Head, we moved to Africa, which isn’t near Malin Head at all. Three years there and off to London and then Athlone, I had 10 years in Navan, two in Ballinasloe, one of no fixed abode and now I’m 30 years in Galway and have lived in 26 different houses here. All that and still now, nearly 50, half the week travelling. Next up is Longford, Bray, Dun Laoghaire and Dundalk. Nature of the beast.

My daughter is home sick from school and I’m down in the shed working, although perhaps puffing a cigar and floating in the smoke would be a better description. I think of maybe taking up travel writing. Out into the adventure of the world and to earn a crust from it too. I’d go round the States first on a public bus. New York, then south, across to the west and back over by Minnesota and New England… the boat home to Europe and then a book about the whole thing.

I’m half there in me mind already. I’d better read a few good travel books to get me going. I go looking for a book. I’m always looking for a book. We have a few thousand of them in the house and they’re not organised in any useful way, I spend hours with the head crocked sideways searching out some yoke or other that I’m sure I have. Busy looking for something that’s here.

My phone rings. It’s m’inion tinn. “Where are you?” she asks…